Businesses can no longer afford to ignore this technology shift. If your website is not optimised for mobile, do it now! Don’t risk your website crashing or malfunctioning, frustrating your customers and losing them to competitors due to bad browser experiences.

Why should a website be different on a mobile?

There are many reasons why your website should appear differently on a mobile to a desktop computer. Some key reasons are size, usability and speed. A desktop PC has a large screen, a mouse and high amounts of memory. Mobiles and tablets have much smaller screens, less memory and touch-screens.

Due to these differences, users will need to zoom in and out of content, regularly scroll (horizontally and vertically), wait for images to load and may find clicking on buttons fiddly. Optimising your website to suit the mobile interface will provide customers with a much easier and happier end user experience.

What should you consider when making your website mobile ready?

Media – If images are large, they will take time to load, which can be frustrating. Use smaller sizes and compress images so they load faster. Also reconsider your use of Adobe Flash as iPhone and iPad users are unable to view this file type.

Touch-screen – Make sure buttons are larger so they can easily be clicked using touch. Adding white-space around buttons will help prevent users from clicking on other buttons accidentally. Also, design your mobile website so it is a single column. Users only want to have to scroll in one direction, not vertically and horizontally.

Content – So users don’t have to zoom in and out, make text bigger. Cut down on copy, so customers have less to read. Also make sure the key information is quick and easy to find, such as opening times, directions and contact information.

Navigation – Simplify your navigation so users can find what they want quickly and easily. Remove drop-down menus as these can be tricky to use with touch-screen.

Mobile – Remember that most devices include a phone, so make numbers clickable for additional functionality.

Responsive design – Use a responsive theme so your site layout easily adapts to the specific device, whether it’s a desktop, laptop, mobile or tablet. This is also useful on phones, where users may want to view the website in portrait or landscape.

Now, take a look at your website and decide if it’s mobile ready. If you’d like some help, give us a call at Fifteen Ten. We’re highly experienced in creating mobile sites for our clients, so we could help yours too.

LONDON

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